A movie-style happy ending started with a date to Park Hall Cinema

Park Hotel, Cardiff in 1971, with the Park Hall cinema in the foreground

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Many Cardiffians will remember the Park Hall cinema which, before it became a full-time cinema in 1916, was a theatre.

Gary Wharton in his ribbon of dreams – Remembering the Cardiff Cinemas informs us that: “It became the premier cinema in South Wales but after the talkies arrived in 1929, the thirties proved a very difficult period for the Park Hall Cinema with the rise in the commercial clout of developing cinema chains making it a struggle to compete for the latest film releases.”

Gary goes on to tell us that: “Cinemascope came to the Park Hall and was succeeded around 1962 by a brave attempt to save the fading cinema with the coming of Cinerama.”

The cost of installing Cinerama was £100,000 and How The West Was Won had its Welsh premier in the Park Hall in 1964. But sadly the grand old Park Hall Cinema’s days were numbered and it closed its doors on December 4, 1971.

My earliest Park Hall Cinema memory is of watching Errol Flynn in They Died With Their Boots On. I must have been only six or seven at the time with wooden gun in hand – no proper toy guns were made during the war years. I “shot” a number of Red Indians, or to be politically correct Native Americans, that night.

Film stars Meredith Edwards and Maudie Edwards photographed with Mr. Vernon Burns (right), manager of Eros Films Ltd, when they attended a preview of "Girdle or Gold" at the Park Hall Cinema, Cardiff. 15th August 1952. Copyright Media Wales

Back then, we usually had to queue in Park Place to get in the cinema. I was so small that I used to sneak in and my mother would just show the tickets she had bought for herself, my sister Valerie, Aunt Sarah and her daughter Thelma.

The family story goes that one evening while waiting in the queue, we had got as far as the foyer, I whispered to my mum: “Shall I sneak in now Mam?”

A gentleman standing next to her in the queue heard me and said to her: “Gor blimey missus. You have trained him well.”

Fast forward to the September of 1958. I was on the late bus home from the Paget Dance Rooms in Penarth and I sat next to a young lady and after engaging her in conversation, asked her would she like to come with me to see The Fly which was showing in the Park Hall. This was the original film which starred Vincent Price.

Anyway, she turned up for that date and all these years later she is still sitting next to me, albeit on the sofa, as she later became my wife.

Ben Underwood, general manager of Thistle Cardiff, The Parc which is making plans to celebrate the hotel’s 130th anniverary would like to hear your Park Hotel or Park Hall Cinema stories. If you had your wedding reception or anniversary there, or if you worked at the hotel, he would be delighted to hear from you. You can email him at ben.underwood@thistle.co.uk or phone him on 0871 3769011.